Tell me all your thoughts on God.

I'll tell you a few things because this is a short blog:

1. We belong to each other. That sounds like more of a thought on people, but it's also about God for me. Every person that exists is a beloved child of God, and therefore also has value, the same value as everybody else, to God. And when I think about the world, I generally think as a whole we are pretty terrible about believing that every person is beloved and has the same value and worth. Maybe because we forget that we belong to each other, and that we're all fellow humans meant to care about each other? (SOMETIMES though, we do offer grace and love to people and that is beautiful and inspiring.)
2. Everything doesn't happen for a reason. My least fav "Christian" phrase is "everything happens for a reason." I wrote a whole blog post about it a year or two ago if you want to read a long reflection about that. Mostly, I think some things do. People in my life often feel like this gift that wasn't an accident, certain possibilities seem like the work of the divine, and I thank God for near misses. Overall though, I don't think God has everything all planned out. If God does, then I have a lot of questions about suffering and loss. I tend to think that God grieves with us when we grieve, and isn't the one doling out heartache for the sake of some new opportunity or lesson. 
3. God makes life out of death. Lots of the hills burned up in my hometown this fall. Everything was black and dead. My friends and fam have been telling me lately that the hills are covered in flowers and are green, and you'd never know that they had been burned. Life out of death is part of nature. It's also this thing I've experienced in my life, where I've been able to hold joy at the same time as despair, and to me, that's God bringing life out of death. When my bff died, I also found support in community, friends that were estranged came back together to love each other and grieve together, gratitude for a friend I got to know and love (and know I really mattered to), and also this sense deep in my gut that there is life beyond death and we'll see each other again. To me, that hope is life. Also, Jesus.      
4. Beautiful things come from God. You know, like sunsets and oceans and music and math and  kids' wonder.
5. God is more loving, more compassionate, more merciful than me and you.